05 May 2019

Ten young Batswana from three universities recently visited Huawei headquarters in China under the Huawei’s corporate social responsibility programme.

The team, which comprised three women and seven men, won the two-week trip after undergoing Huawei  interviews conducted at their various universities.

One of the beneficiaries, Ms Blessing Moloko from Botswana International University of  Science and Technology said the trip was informative and opened her mind in the technology industry.

Ms Moloko said they attended classes at the Huawei Training Centre where they learnt about telecommunication networks (4G, 5G), key technologies in ICT (Cloud computing, Big data, Artificial Intelligence). 

She said they were taught about motivation and industry trend of the 5G as well as configuration of a 4G and 5G base station. 

“In Shenzhen, we visited a number of exhibitions as well as get insight of the Huawei Technologies and those that they are still working on,” she said. 

Ms Bonno Thari from University of Botswana said they would use the training to develop the ICT sector in Botswana.

    She said they learnt the Chinese culture and language.

    For Lesego Moeng of Botho University, the China trip was an eye opener. 

She learnt the network engineering side of things through the use of 5G, the new technology evolution.

Prior to their departure, Minister of Transport and Communications, Ms Dorcas  Makgato, told them that they  were seeds that were planted by their parents, nurtured by the government and now taking their journey to the next level through Huawei Company to develop the human development ecosystem.

She extended government’s appreciation to Huawei for extending partnership to Botswana to develop the ICT.

Ms Makgato said winning nations were not only mere participants in the world technology, but those who led in the adoption, use and invention of technology.

She said President Dr Mokgweetsi Masisi, in affirming the need for Botswana to be amongst the technology leaders, entreated Batswana to transform the country’s economy from being resourced based to knowledge based one.

For his part the Huawei managing director Botswana office, Mr Ren Fujun said Seeds for the Future programme was Huawei’s largest global corporate social responsibility programme, which aimed at leveraging its world-leading ICT technologies.

He said the programme was to cultivate ICT professionals in the countries where it operated and thus drove the ICT industry forward.

Mr Fujun said the ICT competition was a global platform for exchange of ideas and  an important part of Huawei’s talent development strategy and the ecosystem of sharing and mutually benefitting will lead to the realisation of fully connected intelligent world. Ends